Subject: FAO SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT DIMENSIONS FAO SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT DIMENSIONS We are pleased to announce the latest update to 'Sustainable Development Dimensions', the Internet information service of the Sustainable Development Department (SD) of the Food and Agricultuyre Organization of the United Nations (FAO). Our URL is http://www.fao.org/waicent/faoinfo/sustdev/welcome_.htm> The following is taken from our 'What's new' page (http://www.fao.org/waicent/faoinfo/sustdev/whatsnew.htm), which contains active hyperlinks to the new material. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- THREE BIG SPECIALS * Five years after the 1992 Earth Summit, how far have we come in achieving sustainable development? World heads of state will meet for a UN General Assembly special session late in June to answer that question and negotiate proposals for future action. For the occasion, we publish 'Earth Summit+5: progress on the road from Rio', presenting FAO reports on progress in key areas of Agenda 21, the Summit's programme of action. * Our second big Special is 'Gender - the key to sustainability and food security', describing the new 'gender approach' embodied in FAO's Plan of Action for Women in Development. It outlines the conceptual framework for analysing gender implications for sustainable development, and shows how FAO is transforming these ideas into strategies and action in the areas of natural resources, agricultural support systems, food and nutrition, and improved policy-making and planning. Also available in French and Spanish. * Since 1991, SD's Agricultural Education Group has carried out an exhaustive review of the state of agricultural education and training in developing countries. The results of two expert consultations, a survey of educational institutions worldwide, and eight regional round tables are presented in our third Special, 'Agricultural education and training: issues and opportunities'. It makes extensive recommendations for adjusting curricula and training methods to the new realities of rural society. The report is also in published in French. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- DIMENSION: PEOPLE In our 'People's Participation' section, we publish 'Participatory action research and people's participation', an important study produced for FAO in the early 1990s by Gerrit Huizer, from the Third World Centre at the Netherlands' Catholic University of Nijmegen. From a review of FAO People's Participation Programme projects in Sierra Leone, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Zambia, Huizer concludes that 'participatory action research is a delicate and in many countries very controversial affair - persons getting involved should be highly familiar with the local intricacies of economic and political power'. Users with fast lines can access the Full document (170K!) - the less well connected should start with the Contents and preface. In Analysis, there's an article by the University of Wisconsin's John Gastil onProblems in small group decision making. The 'Women and Population' section last month carried News about the introduction of the FAO/ILO Socioeconomic and Gender Analysis (SEAGA) Programme in francophone West Africa. This month's update includes a briefing on SEAGA in French and English. In Resources, there's also a short report on a Small animals project with women in Gambia. SD's Population Service reports on a series of recent international meetings: the Arab Regional Population Conference in Cairo, a Thematic workshop on adolescent reproductive health, a UNFPA thematic workshop on indicators and a workshop on Population characteristics in fishing communities that brought together 23 fisheries scientists, socio-economists and population experts from Bangladesh, India, Malaysia, the Philippines and Senegal. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- DIMENSION: INSTITUTIONS In the 'Land Tenure' Analysis section, there's a two-part article by Gabrio Marinozzi on 'Agriculture periurbaine au Nicaragua' - after a brief review of Nicaraguan politics from Somoza to neo-liberalism, it looks at the role of peri-urban farming in meeting the needs of poor city dwellers in the region of Ticauntepe. In another article, SD's Paolo Groppo reviews the results of 'La reforma agraria en America Latina' and offers 'un marco de referencia metodologico pragmatico, adaptado a las exigencias actuales'. We post two new contributions to our Land Tenure Forum on 'Private and public sector cooperation in national land tenure development in Eastern and Central Europe' - Graham Lanphier and John Parker, of the Overseas Projects Corporation of Victoria, Australia report on Outsourcing to the private sector as a tool for effective land data administration, while Jerzy Kozlowski describes Polish experience in creation of real property registration system. In our 'Rural Administration and Cooperatives' section there is News of a recently completed FAO study on rural employment - or unemployment - in Albania. The study found that 'subsistence production is now the major socio-economic characteristic of the farm sector' and that off-farm employment does exist - but mainly in the form of emigration to other countries. We will publish extracts from the study in a future update. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- DIMENSION: ENVIRONMENT China features strongly in this month's Environment update. In 'Environmental Policy, Planning and Management' News, we report on a new study, by SD's Environment and Natural Resources Service and Chinese experts, on the uncontrolled pollution and land degradation that have accompanied the country's programme of intensive agriculture and rural job creation (in Analysis, we publish the study's recommendations for 'Sustainable agriculture and rural development in China'). Also in the News: the UN Sustainable Development Commission meeting in April, the upcoming Conference of the Parties to the Convention to Combat Desertification, and a new report onland quality indicators. In 'Energy for Development', SD's Senior Energy Coordinator, Gustavo Best - just back from Beijing - reviews China's future energy scenario in his report on April's Asia Pacific forum on new energy technology. China is by far the fastest growing energy market in the world, writes Best, and - while coal will remain the prime energy source - Chinese scientists have made great progress in renewable energy technologies. He saw some of those technologies in development during his visit to the Energy demonstration base at Shenyang Agricultural University. Moving the focus to Europe, we publish two documents from a recent FAO workshop in Belgium on anaerobic conversion for environmental protection, sanitation and re-use of residues: the Conclusions and recommendations and the abstract of a paper on Anaerobic digestion of agroindustrial byproducts and wastes (did you know that agriculture in the European Union produces an estimated 1,100,000,000 tonnes of organic wastes a year?) Next update: 15 June 1997 - message sent by infoterra@cedar.univie.ac.at to signoff from the list, send an email to majordomo@cedar.univie.ac.at the message body should read unsubscribe infoterra your@email.address -